


Ephemeral Things

by BloodyMary, Shanxara



Series: The Story-Telling Ox [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Coracavus, Corpses, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:51:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6301702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyMary/pseuds/BloodyMary, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shanxara/pseuds/Shanxara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prison of Coracavus--now abandoned, still stands as one of many silent monuments to the cruelty of old Tevinter. But for those who know how to listen, even the voiceless can still speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ephemeral Things

Adaar sat on her throne, turning over the little tooth-shaped gem in her fingers. If anyone needed a reminder how awful Tevinter could be... She closed her fingers over it, wondering what she should do about it.

Put it on display somewhere with the whole story described in detail?

“What's up with the thing?” Sera asked, nearly making the Vashoth mage jump. Honestly, one day the girl would sneak up on someone she shouldn't and end up zapped, or stabbed. 

“It’s a memento.” Adaar remembered the smell of dust and corruption, and slanted sunlight passing through broken walls. “For a hero who died long ago.”

 

“Ephemeral things, lives.” Solas held out his hand for the gem that Adaar had just picked up and turned in her fingers. It was a pale yellow color and shaped like a predator’s fang. She had never seen anything like it. She dropped it on his palm. 

He closed his fingers around it and went down on one knee beside the desiccated body that was probably a woman. His other hand hovered over her face, as if wanting to close her eyes, except neither eyes nor eyelids were left in her face, only parchment thin skin stretched over jutting bone. 

That was when the Inquisitor noted that the dead woman had no teeth. Not because of old age or bad luck, but because they had been forcibly removed all at once. Even in this state, some of the wounds were still visible on her jaw. 

Adaar knelt down on her other side, and looked at Solas whose face was expressionless, but for someone who had learned to read what he didn’t want to show the agony in his eyes was plain. There was some straw piled around the walls of the cell and the door was gigantic and almost a foot thick. This was not merely a cell. It was meant to contain something extremely dangerous. Although not all dangers were physical or demonic. 

She remembered the records they had found and once more looked at the dead woman’s mutilated face. There was nothing that was as dangerous as ideas. 

“Iunia Talvas”, she figured. “They really did it. And then left her to rot.”

The elf said nothing, his fist clenched tight around the gem. 

“They implied they’d take her away from here if she decided to recant. It seems she did not,” Adaar mused on. She looked around, taking in the state of the cell. There was a pool of blood on the floor, still relatively fresh. A large splatter marred the wall opposite to the cell door, as if someone had spilled a bucket against it. 

Or as if someone had used blood magic. 

A look back at the doors confirmed they seemed to have been broken open. “I guess the darkspawn broke in here,” she guessed, thinking aloud. “After all, the guards would have had a key.” There were the tell-tale shimmers of a veilfire rune in the corner of the cell. That implied certain things. “It seems she was a mage. So, when the darkspawn came she fought them, maybe with the last magic left to her, blood magic.”

Solas nodded. “That sounds plausible.” 

Adaar carefully poked her finger at the blood spatters. They were dry but didn’t look older than a few days. “Just how is that possible? I would have guessed this was the result of the Venatori machinations but it seems they never came here to disturb this room.” 

Solas shook his head. “The veil is thin,” he only said. Not that he needed to tell more—Adaar and Dorian were both mages, and were aware what that could mean.

“Still, that probably was a better way for her to die than what awaited her otherwise,” the Inquisitor added.

In the background, she heard Dorian shuffle his feet, and she would have bet a considerable sum he was not looking at them. 

As carefully as possible, given the state of the body and some strange desire to inflict no more cruelty on a helpless victim, even if said victim was already beyond pain, she looked at the hand that had held the gem. There was a cut in the skin of the palm, an indention in the exact dimensions of the piece of jewellery. “She clung to it so hard it cut her. It must have meant a lot to her.” 

“It symbolised her god.” Solas’s voice was soft, almost hoarse. “Gems like this were sometimes used as a symbol of Fen’Harel, who among other things was God of Rebellion. She fought, challenged authority in his name. Even when her fight meant her agonising death, she did not give up.” A drop of dark liquid fell from his clenched fist to the ground. 

“A rebel and a god of rebellion,” Adaar agreed. “So that would make sense.” She looked at the desiccated remains that had once been a brave woman. 

Solas nodded, eyes closed and his face very still. Did he look if the woman’s spirit still lingered in the Fade? Or commend her soul to her god? He had never struck Adaar as religious, but one never knew. 

She looked up and saw Dorian gesture for her to come, so she rose and went to the other mage. 

“There is more,” he said. “I think the other prisoners from the records might be in the other cells.”

Since Solas made no move to rise, she followed Dorian out of the cell. “Alright, lead the way.” They walked down the hall, past the makeshift barricades that had been erected during the futile effort to stem the second Blight. 

There had been a rather intense struggle, and dead Darkspawn and Tevinter guards attested to it. Some of the bodies still held their shape though, and there still were pools of dried blood. Dorian kicked one of them, who wore a distinct pointy helmet. “Venatori”, he commented. “History seems to repeat itself.”

In some places, pillars and roof had come down and most cells were inaccessible, their doors rusted shut and bent and twisted by the crumbling of the building. In one of the few that could be opened they found Varric.

The dwarf wore a look of disgust on his face and the Inquisitor found herself mirroring it. This wasn’t merely a cell; it was a torture chamber. Nothing as giant and elaborate as what Adaar had seen in the future, but the purpose of the small room was undeniable. 

There were three dead bodies in here, but one, in a smashed open canopy jar as they had found in many other places, seemed to have been decoration, taken from an old grave site. That the dead elf in the middle of the floor on the other hand had clearly been tortured, even though the dry air and the passage of years had reduced him to a skeleton with parchment skin stretched over brittle bone. Grotesque blades pinned his body to the ground, one through the chest, the other through the hip. His head had been removed and lay about a foot apart on the ground. 

A second corpse lay on an altar-like stone pedestal, in front of pyramids of skulls. 

Varric, who had been kneeling by the pinned elf, rose, shaking his head. 

“This has to be Gallus,” he said. “He still had the ring that marked him as property of House Lartys on. But I have no idea who this one is.” He pointed to the other victim. Or was that sacrifice? Ancient discoloration of the stone seemed to imply a lot of blood being spilled. 

When Dorian stepped forward, the dwarf handed him the ring. “Here Sparkler. Does your family have pretty things like this, too?” It was clearly a rather misguided attempt at humour. 

Dorian, already pale under his tan, turned the green-tinged copper bauble in his fingers. The sigil of Lartys was still visible. “No”, he said, blushing suddenly. Turning the ring in his fingers, he twitched under the scrutiny. “Definitely not.” 

Probably because he was so flustered and feeling guilty, he did what most people do when holding a ring – he put it on. 

“Take that off,” Adaar snapped, shocked. “You don't—well, you've seen where it's been.”

The mage went bone white and tried to take off the ring only to find it stuck. “I… I can’t.” Eyes wide, he tugged frantically on his finger, “It won’t come off.” 

Adaar took his wrist and looked at the ring with a frown. It didn’t move when she tried to pull at it. “Do we have any oil?” she asked. “It's made for an elf—it could just be stuck. I can see if I can just yank it off, but that might hurt.”

Dorian still looked pale, but Varric started inspecting his gear for something that would be slippery enough. 

“At worst we can wait until we're in camp,” the dwarf offered. “And until then, you’ll get a taste of how the other half lives.” He gave Dorian’s shoulder, or rather, his upper back, a comradely pat. 

With a shuddering breath, the mage nodded, trying a saucy grin and failing. “I probably deserve this.”

“You do.” The cool voice was Solas, who had appeared in the entrance to the cell. The normally so collected elf gave the impression of a storm cloud as he walked in and eyed Dorian contemptuously. “As you can see, at worst, it will come off when you die.” 

“That's quite enough,” Adaar said in her best Inquisitor Mom tone. Sometimes, they just were like kids, really. “I'm sure Dorian understands slavery is bad by now, Solas.”

“He certainly knows.” The elf shook his head and looked away. “I wouldn’t venture so far to claim he understands.” With that he knelt down beside the dead slave and proceeded to ignore the rest of the party. 

Semantics. Although he might have had a point. Except, they weren’t going to change the nature of society in an afternoon, so Adaar was grateful when Varric continued searching his pack and finally pulled out a bit of bacon shining with grease. “Let’s try this. Outside. Where there is more light.” 

Dorian shook his head. Obviously wrestling down his panic, he steeled himself. Hand clenched into a fist, he grated. “No. We finish here first. I am in no danger, after all.” 

Adaar sort of expected Solas to make a snide comment ‘It’s not like house Lartys will swoop in here and claim you as their property’, but the elf remained silent. A look back showed that he inspected one of the blades transfixing the dead man, possible trying to figure out if there was a place where he could touch it without cutting himself. There didn’t seem to be any. He motioned for them to go on. 

The Inquisitor shrugged. If he wanted to be like that. She could always talk to him about it later. “Alright.” Leaving Solas behind once more, she led them out of the cell and down the hall, inspecting the last few rooms which were little more than cages. 

One of them literally, as the remains in it weren’t human, but large, heavily armoured animals. “Gurns”, Varric noted. 

There were two of them, little more than dust and armour plates now. Another forlorn human form lay between them, showing no obvious cause of death. A candle stood in front of their face and still burned peacefully. 

Adaar frowned. Had one of the Venatori done this? Nobody else had been here for centuries. She inspected the tiny flame but it truly seemed to be an entirely mundane light source. It just didn’t seem like the Venatori to do something like that. It reminded her of what she had seen in the Fade. 

“They seem to have died relatively peacefully,” she said. “And why are the animals here? This was a prisoner, so they couldn't have been their caretaker, could they?”

Dorian shook his head. “I wouldn't know,” he said. 

Varric spread his hands and shrugged. “You could probably set Ruffles to find some academic who will know about ancient Tevinter prisons.”

Adaar looked around and wondered. She was curious, yes. But more than that she wanted this to mean something not just to those who died here. True, some of them probably had been criminals, but this should not mean that those who weren't would be dismissed as anomalies. 

“I will think about it,” she said. Then, she breathed out slowly. “I don’t want to leave them like this”, she said. “They didn’t deserve this.”

 

“Same shit as always then,” Sera said. “Big people are assholes and the little people suffer, because they don't like little people getting ideas.”

“Pretty much, yes,” Adaar replied and slipped the amulet back into her pocket. 

“So, what did you do?” the elf asked, plopping down on the floor with little regard to its state and how it would affect her clothes. “Take all those soldier guys and set them to bury a bunch of long dead prisoners?”

Adaar shook her head. “Yes, there was some discussion on what rites to use, but in the end we convinced our Dalish soldiers to help with it, as those rites were probably closest to whatever those people would have used back then.”

“And what about Dorian?” Sera asked, crossing her legs to make herself more comfortable. “Would kind of suck for him, if he were stuck with the ring, but hey, it might scare some shits too. Be careful what you do with your toys, and all that.”

Adaar rolled her eyes. “It got off. It was just stuck.” 

Sera eyed Adaar for a moment, then wrinkled her nose. “I hope you washed that tooth-thing. Ugh. It was lying around there for ages, and you keep playing with it. Yuck.”

“I did see where it's been,” Adaar pointed out.

**Author's Note:**

> So, in case you were wondering, the amulet is a thing--it shows up in Dragon Age 2 - Fen'harel's Tooth. Add that in Dragon Age: Origins we find out there was a period when elven and human faiths were mingling and you get this.


End file.
